Wake school board considering canceling school on Election Day

The Wake County Board of Education is favoring a proposal that would making Nov. 8 — Election Day — a day off. Parents have recently raised concerns about the safety of students while schools function as polling places.

"We have this concern about Election Day over and over again," said school board member Jim Martin. "I think, rather than having to come to it later, I think it would be better to put it into our planning structure."

The board is weighing the measure after declining to consider requests to do so earlier this spring, when the board changed its calendar to add time for teachers to do new state-required reading training.

The board took no action Tuesday, though members favored the proposal. The board is planning to take up the change for a vote Aug. 2. At that time, the board will likely also consider making June 19 — Juneteenth — a teacher workday for year-round schools.

​District will join Durham, Johnston, Chapel Hill school districts with not holding classes on Election Day once officially approved.

It’s a safety measure, they contend.

“Election days give ill-intentioned people access to school buildings and students,” according to the group’s website. “Cones, ropes, and hallway monitors are inadequate barriers for stopping an armed person.”

School board members favored the proposal Tuesday among two others outlined by school system officials that would give everyone Nov. 8 off. The others would have changed other school days and in some cases added one more school day onto the end of the school year.

"The board has given a thumbs up ... staff will bring a recommendation for option three, which will use one of the bank days we have reserved," said Superintendent Cathy Moore.

Just taking Nov. 8 off, without changing any other days, “will be the last intrusive of all options,” Assistant Superintendent of School Choice, Planning and Assignment Glenn Carrozza told the school board Tuesday.

Why Wake County parents are advocating for students to stay home on Election Day

The proposal wouldn’t change anything else in the schedule; it would, rather, reduce the school system’s flexibility to account for severe weather and possible school closures. Instead of having three days to cancel school for weather with no repercussions, schools would have just two.

School security has been top of mind since a gunman massacred 21 people and injured 18 others at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May.

The May 24 attack is the latest among years of indiscriminate mass school shootings that have occurred for decades in the United States, claiming the lives of hundreds of students, educators and others, including several dozen in just the past five years.

Wake County election officials can assign any public building to be a polling place. In Wake County, more than a third of polling sites are Wake County Public School System schools (75 of 208 sites). That’s more than a third of the system’s nearly 200 schools.

Voters at the schools are often corralled in a specific location to vote but do not have to go through the school’s typical visitor check-in process.